Turn On Your Lovelight
Losing My Virginity after My First Grateful Dead Concert
Click to listen to Pigpen sing “Lovelight” live with the Grateful Dead back in 1970 -
Full Table of Contents: Surfing the Interstates: Complete Chapter Guide
Chapter Two: Turn On Your Lovelight
Night coming on fast. Spot in the woods just off the highway. Good tree cover. Close enough to hear the trucks. Make camp by flashlight. Rainbow. Hitting on me? Pull out my Record and write: "Very much in love?" and underline it. What do I know about love?
Unable to sleep. Highway noise persistent. In my pack, next to the Colombian, my cassette player and the tape I'd made before leaving—Dead, Allmans from '70 and '71, before everything changed. Duane's death at 24, October 29, 1971, motorcycle accident. Then Berry Oakley, also 24, three blocks from where Duane died, also on a motorcycle. Losses looming large. Tonight I need music—something familiar in all this strangeness.
Load the tape, light joint, deep hit. Dark Star floats into Pennsylvania darkness. Jerry's liquid silver tone snaking in and out of the forest around me. That name—the Grateful Dead—what does it mean? A call to live so fully that when death comes, you're grateful for the ride?
Another hit. The weed hitting harder than expected. Music fills the small space, fills my head, fills the years between now and then. Pigpen slaying “Smokestack Lightning.” Found dead four months ago. Thunderbird and Southern Comfort killed him slow and alone in Corte Madera. Twenty-seven.
Death’s been everywhere, not just Vietnam. Two years ago—Hendrix at 27, choked on vomit and barbiturates. Month later, Janis, also 27, needle still in her arm. The music saving us, killing its prophets.
Another hit. Deep. Holding it like I was seven underwater, pushing limits. These Pennsylvania woods don’t dissolve—they turn inside out, become negative space, and I am falling up into memory. October 16, 1970, Bob Weir's birthday, but birthdays are just markers. We're all being born constantly, dying constantly. The Dead understand this, play this, ARE this...
Walking toward Irvine Auditorium on that memorable fall evening in 1970 but I'm also receiving electric communion. The acid dissolved on my tongue an hour ago, sacred wafer, body of Christ become body of Hofmann—Swiss bicycle ride into Maya..
Now I'm five, rubbing my eyes until golden pillows appear. Now twelve at Whitby, reading Emerson: "I become a transparent eyeball." Now eighteen, entering this Gothic temple at Penn.
All these moments happening simultaneously. Time isn't linear—it's spiral, like DNA, like Fibonacci sequences my math professor showed us in everything—
The steps worn smooth by four decades of students. Inside, air thick with grass smoke becoming incense. Flash—seven years old, swinging the censer at St. Patrick's, brass chains in small hands, smoke rising like prayers. Now it's clouds of grass and Pig's cigarette, killing him even as he prepares to preach...
Ten thousand organ pipes. Ten thousand pathways. Vaulted ceilings, mosaic tiles for sacred acoustics. My father's voice: "Bach wrote 'Soli Deo Gloria' on his manuscripts." But Jerry writes set lists on napkins—somehow holier, more true to how revelation arrives...
Finding my spot, stage left. Crowd exploding into organic mass of seekers. Girl next to me—eyes like stained glass, Fra Angelico blue. When she smiles I see every girlfriend I never had. All-boys schools. Daddy thought women were distractions from the life of the mind.
The acoustic Dead begin. Jerry, Bobby, Phil sitting like tribal council. After some gems from their recent albums, Jerry sings “Black Peter,” welcoming death amongst friends. The hush brings chills.
Through the song's soft sadness—flash—Uncle Richard's bitter laughter, that sharp edge against his mother's faith. Red Alfa Romeo, top down, leather jacket, white scarf flowing, racing toward his chosen end.
Flash—Aunt Niki at Grandpop's funeral, barely there, translucent. Her accusations about childhood, things that happened behind closed doors. My father's dismissal. The institutions, the treatments, the weight she carried. Truth or invention—who could say?
Flash—her kid sister Liz leaving Grandmere and Claire at the kitchen table. Climbing the stairs. The finality of her decision. The silence after.
Will Mama’s Irish genes save me? How many times have I thought about changing my name? Maybe the acid can teach me to channel it, outrun it—
The boys finish with a soothing “Candyman,” and I surface from the spiral, gasping for hope.
New Riders kick off with “Last Lonely Eagle.” Already coming up hard. Acid hitting like grace, sudden, unearned. Jerry's pedal steel sounds exactly like angels would sound if angels were cowboys, if heaven was Marin County, if God wore boots...
The steel guitar becomes silver river flowing through the auditorium. Each note bending light through water. Time stretches—twenty minutes? Two hours? Can't tell. Country-rock fusion perfect for this in-between state. Not quite acoustic, not quite electric. Knowing that I’ll never land.
Marmaduke finishes with a rousing “Henry.” All of us singing along, knowing every word. He swaggers off, hat raised to overwhelming energy.
Long break. Then—
The Grateful Dead assume command. Electric instruments emerging like tools of transformation. When they plug in—revelation in real time. Wires, wood, metal, but also shamanic technology. Touch it wrong, you die. Like Pigpen dying. Like we're all dying. But dying into life, into NOW...
Three hours in. “Truckin'”—Walls become lungs. Gothic arches breathing. I'm inside the building's body, inside sound itself, inside my own borrowed stardust body. Jerry's guitar isn't making music—it's unmaking reality, note by note. Only scaffolding remains. Scaffolding made of light...
Trip deepening. Not understanding music but understanding SOUND. Rhythm carrying meaning beyond words. Whole auditorium moving toward something unnameable. Bill’s bass drum—same frequency as thunder, as heartbeat, as earth's pulse...
“Casey Jones” explodes. Everyone dancing. I'm not me—I'm WE. Collective organism. Stained-glass-eyed girl's body moving like continents shifting. The Church fears the body because the body KNOWS. We're animals who learned to dream...
Phil's bass bombs drop like giant footsteps. All naked under clothes, under skin, down to quantum level. Particles dancing in and out of existence like his notes—here, gone, here again...
“Saint Stephen with a rose, in and out of the garden he goes”—flash on Daddy grading our grass trimming and mowing, marking his chart. Real map is Bobby's rhythmic patterns. Crowd moving like wheat in the wind. Perfect accident that's not accident—destiny, karma, all the words when coincidence becomes too heavy...
Between songs—tuning. Even this holy. Searching for perfect pitch like soul searching for harmony. Almost there, always adjusting. Nana tuning her radio, static between stations where possibility lives...
“China Cat Sunflower” into “Know You Rider”. Transformation in real time. One becoming another without dying. Secret—straight to light, bypass suffering. Maybe heresy is evolution...
Acid peaks during “Dark Star.”
Grandpop, the immigrant Count. Carrying his faith in America, believing Alexandre de Tocqueville's promises. Lost everything in '29 Crash, year Daddy was born.
Wall Street—double-breasted suit. Struggling to rebuild between wars. Chuck Spalding partnership—JFK's groomsman. Flying on "vitamin" injections—actual methedrine from the President's Dr. Feelgood. Never knowing his grandson would drop acid in a sound temple.
Goms at morning prayer. White gloves. Saintly pretensions denying debauched decades. Assuming ascension via confession.
Daddy at Harvard. Young, already frozen. Choosing intellect over feeling, control over surrender.
Mama driving her gold Vista Cruiser. Six kids to Jones Beach. Weekday. Kent cigarette in hand. Cheerleading our joy. Breeze in her hair. Carvel on the way home.
Me at sixteen. Simon and Garfunkel, Royal Albert Hall. “Sounds of Silence” echoing in that cavern. Not knowing I'm rehearsing for this moment.
Whole ancestral chain preparing ground for this absolute break—
"TURN ON YOUR LOVE LIGHT!"
Pigpen at microphone. Burning prophet. Sweat darkening leather vest. Voice not pretty—never pretty—but TRUE. Truth trumps beauty. Singing about life force itself. What makes cells divide, flowers turn to sun, humans reach in darkness...
Not heartbreak—heart-opening. Cardiac chakra supernova. Sacred Heart on fire because when heart truly opens it burns, radiates, transforms everything...
Whole auditorium moving. Single organism, thousand faces. I'm dancing—not me but bashful Exonian. Noble counts, too dignified to let it all hang out. NOW making up for lost time...
After the song—tambourine at stage edge. Chest level. Left on organ bench. Shining halo, offering rhythm, participation—
Moving without deciding. Hand grasps. Circuit completes. Live wire. Lightning. More alive—electricity itself. Current from Pigpen's organ through PA through air through body through tambourine back to song...
Shaking it. Each shake heartbeat. Each jingle joy audible. Universe's pulse. Pigpen SEES me. Points. Knowing smile. Hand raised in approval. Not just with band—AM band. Playing existence into being...
Song builds like mass toward communion. But not altar lines—waves of ecstasy, waves of sound. THIS IS IT. What Latin pointed toward. What incense invoked. What Daddy’s books couldn't touch. Can't think your way to God. Gotta DANCE to get there...
Set break. Can't wait. Still shaking my tambourine. Band leaves like priests to sacristy. House lights harsh but I'm beyond harsh and tender. Where opposites marry. Where thesis and antithesis become synthesis...
"That was beautiful. You were beautiful."
She materializes. Sara. Bill's girlfriend. Art history class—Botticelli arguments. Venus sacred or profane? BOTH. Always BOTH. Pupils dilated. Tripping. Face shifting—child, crone, goddess, girl. Premature touch of gray in auburn hair.
"Andre? You look..." Touches my face. "Like you're made of light."
"Think I am. We all are—Not thinking—KNOWING. Direct understanding...
"I know." Her aura pulsing gold, green. Can see auras now. "Raised Quaker. Sit in silence until light moves us. You're speaking without words."
Takes my hand. Electricity—not metaphor. Actual blue fire. Medieval painters put halos on saints—just painting what they saw...
"Come with me."
Outside. October air sharp. Campus transformed. Every tree burning. Buildings monuments. Students trailing comet energy. Walking silent. Speech would break it. Reach my rented triple decker. She looks up. Three flights...
"Your yellow room. Bill told me. Need sun."
Climbing Dante's spirals. Not hell—paradise. Door opens. Yellow walls GLOW. Not reflecting—generating light. Sara gasps. We're holding each other in concentrated sunshine...
"You painted this?"
Nod. Remember weekend. High on cocaine. Rolling color like van Gogh. Creating three-dimensional mandala...
Kissing before knowing. Mouth—acid and apples. Eve offering knowledge. Tongue teaching language before words...
"I've never—"
Laughs. Pure joy. "Of course. Been saving yourself. For this. For now. For understanding."
Dress over head. Every sculpture alive. Beauty embodied. Trembling like first ocean...
"It's okay." Guides hands to breasts. Understanding worship. Feminine principle. Soft apocalypse...
Rolling on mattress. Teaching not teaching. Discovering. When we join—vocabulary fails. Circuit from beginning through yellow moment to infinite future...
Moving. Same rhythm as mountain fire song. As waves. As cells. As galaxies. What Pigpen preached. Not sex—connection. Separation into unity...
Eyes locked. See ourselves—two waves pretending separation. Crashing. We're water. Always water...
She comes—universe beginning. I follow—dying not death. Ego dissolving not disappearing. Everything and nothing. Mystic union with infinite...
After. Breathing. Hearts slowing. Yellow walls pulsing. Shining tambourine—proof other world touched this...
Bliss expanding—vanishes.
"Should go. Bill's looking."
"Love him?"
"Thought so. Maybe. Love isn't singular. Love's plural, promiscuous. Recognizes itself everywhere..."
Dressing. Each gesture goodbye. Door closing on secret garden...
"See you again?"
Touches face. "See me everywhere now. Every woman's eyes. Every song. That's initiation. Can't unsee sacred."
Door closes. Alone not alone. Yellow light. Tambourine winking. Still at Irvine. Thousand still dancing...
Lie back. Night replays:
Real education. Theory to lived knowledge...
Confirmation. Larger church. Existence itself...
Initiation. Direct experience. Bypassing interpreters...
Acid softening. Peaks to plateaus. Tomorrow approaching. But now—
Eighteen. Yellow room. Tie-dye tapestries. Pigpen’s tambourine. Woman's taste. Infinity in cells. Also eight-year-old me atop our giant pine, the once and future King of Ledge Acres. Also Jerry's strings. Also Sara's loving moment. Also you, reading, trying to understand youth lost found lost in eternal moment...
Tape long dead. Pennsylvania. Now. Real now, not eternal now. Just cold ground and nylon tent and the memory of memories.
Light another joint. Try to make sense of it. Can't. That's the point. You can't make sense of the senseless. You can only live it, survive it, carry it forward like a tambourine in a backpack, evidence that once you touched the eternal and it touched you back...
Pigpen's dead. My grandfather's dead. Latin mass is dead. But the thing they were pointing toward, the thing behind the thing, the light behind the stained glass—that can't die because it was never born, it just IS, playing peek-a-boo through whatever forms we build to house it...
Tomorrow I'll wake up and keep heading west, carrying all of it with me—the Catholic guilt and the psychedelic grace, my father’s expectations and my mother's love, the noble French bloodline and the peasant wisdom, the priest hands that became writer hands that became lover hands that became empty hands reaching for the next ride...
But tonight I'll just lie here in this tent by the highway, feeling the ghost of Sara's thighs, hearing the echo of ten thousand organ pipes, remembering when I was nothing and everything, when I understood without understanding, when I found God in a yellow room and lost Him again by morning, which is maybe the only way we can bear to find God—in glimpses, in fragments, in the spaces between one song and another where anything might happen and occasionally does...
The highway sings its diesel lullaby. Somewhere Jerry's sleeping. Somewhere Sara's sleeping next to Bill. Somewhere my father's playing bridge with his girlfriend. Somewhere my mother is praying that I am alright. Somewhere Pigpen's learning what comes after the love light goes out…
And here I am, suspended between all of them, trying to write the impossible, trying to make you understand what can't be understood, only experienced, only lived, only survived to tell the tale that can't be told but must be told anyway...
Turn on your love light. Let it shine on me. Even here. Even now.
Even after everything.
→ Next Chapter: Andre meets a flute player who steers with his knees
← Previous: Escaping privilege with $80 and a guitar
Full Table of Contents: Surfing the Interstates: Complete Chapter Guide
🎵 What concert or musical experience changed your perspective on life?
This is Chapter 2 of 16 in my complete 1973 hitchhiking memoir.